FEDARENE, European Federation of Agencies and Regions for Energy and the Environment

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1 FEDARENE, European Federation of Agencies and Regions for Energy and the Environment Concrete experiences in tackling climate change challenges, sustainability and renewable energy sources Social and entrepreneurial impact of climate change Climate refugees Valerio Calzolaio Side event COP21, Paris, Halle Pajol,, 20 esplanade Nathalie Sarraute, Paris 18e. 3 December 2015, 2 p.m. 5 p.m. 1

2 The Universal Declaration of Human Rights Calzolaio Article 13. (1) Everyone has the right to freedom of movement and residence within the borders of each state. (2) Everyone has the right to leave any country, including his own, and to return to his country. Article 14. (1) Everyone has the right to seek and to enjoy in other countries asylum from persecution. (2) This right may not be invoked in the case of prosecutions genuinely arising from nonpolitical crimes or from acts contrary to the purposes and principles of the United Nations. There is an individual and a collective freedom of each migration, intended as a leaving, as a return, as a way of no return, as a way with return, as a definitive or a temporary emigration. Freedom of leaving, right to stay, freedom of migration, rights of migrants. 2

3 Refugees Convention relating to the Status of Refugees, Adoption 28 July 1951, entry into force 22 April 1954 Art. 1 and 2: the term "refugee" shall apply to any person who... owing to well-founded fear of being persecuted for reasons of race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group or political opinion, is outside the country of his nationality and is unable or, owing to such fear, is unwilling to avail himself of the protection of that country; or who, not having a nationality and being outside the country of his former habitual residence as a result of such events, is unable or, owing to such fear, is unwilling to return to it. Calzolaio 3

4 BUT there are other refugees! 2007, Nobel Peace Prize to IPCC Indications of changes in the earth's future climate must be treated with the utmost seriousness, and with the precautionary principle uppermost in our minds. Extensive climate changes may alter and threaten the living conditions of much of mankind. They may induce largescale migration and lead to greater competition for the earth's resources. Calzolaio

5 2015, pope s encyclical Laudato Sì Calzolaio 5

6 Climate refugees Official predictions for the number of possible climate refugees : 250 million by 2050 and in 2007, the IPCC suggested that more than 600 million people currently living in low-lying coastal zones 438 million in Asia and 246 million in least developed countries will be directly at risk to potential threats of climate change in this century; in 2014, the International Displacement Monitoring Centre (IDMC) let us know that between 2008 and 2012, 144 million people were displaced by disasters, during the last 10 years more than 1.5 billion people have been affected by disasters in various ways and 22 million people were newlydisplaced as a result of natural disasters in Some of them were, are and will be climate refugees, that means affected by the consequences of climate change, a number higher than the number of official UNHCR refugees! Calzolaio 6

7 Climate change effects are creating millions of climate refugees - people forced to move from their living places and land by rising temperatures, droughts and famine, sea level change, and extreme weather events including floods and storms. Many are among our planet s poorest and most vulnerable people, those who have contributed the least to our changing global climate but have become the first and main victims of our failure to prevent climate change. Climate change is also being recognised as a significant threat to global peace and a driver of security menaces, as groups or even nations come into conflict over ongoing decline or continuous decline of natural resources and ecosystem service, mainly dealing with their subsistance. Climate refugees are not protected under existing international agreements - in the absence of new legally binding agreements, these people may have nowhere to go and no means to survive. Calzolaio 7

8 Sustainable migrations In September 2015 the UN General Assembly approved new development goals for the next 15 years, called Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) Goal 10 provide an explicit reference to safe, orderly migration, and responsible. It means (implicitly): promoting sustainable migration and combating forced migration. Forced migrations are a constant in the human life on the planet Earth, even in the recent history. It is a form of oppression, which historically we can distinguish in "political" (human beings force other human beings) and "environmental" (if it is the living ecosystem to force species and humans). Now there usually are arbitrary and prohibited. Calzolaio 8

9 Combating Forced Migrations Supporting the development goals and the commitments to sustainable development, is a way to criticise, to oppose, to curb forced migration, those governments and those human behaviors that determine this phenomenon. It is necessary to identify specific measures, policies, supports to intervene on the causes of forced migration or after it occurred. There aren t overlasting and universal solutions. We do not have enough tools: we must better understand, classify, differentiate, select, analyse, act to support a "sustainable migration way". Today, accordingly to the UN and the IPCC opinions, largely shared at scientific level, the anthropogenic global climate change is causing forced migration. We - the 39 industrialized countries of Annex I of the Kyoto Protocol, recognized as countries with the higher level of GHG emissions - are responsible for the climate change negative impacts in other areas These human escapes have been induced by other human communities. Calzolaio 9

10 Environmental refugees Some forced migration are permanent in the history and geography of the evolution of the human beings on the planet. Most of them are effects of war (and political persecution, which deals with the UNCHR mandate) and ecosystem and climate conditions. The present climate refugees are not all the environmental refugees, we are aware of! Five years ago, I published a complete analysis of these forced migrations, in the past, now, in the future*. But a new project is ongoing, carried out by Telmo Pievani and myself, published soon by Einaudi *Unfortunately there are no more copies available. Calzolaio 10

11 next year: Freedom to migrate Calzolaio 11

12 6 millions, 2 millions, , years ago 6 millions years ago: first Hominidis and Hominis, two millions first human species, Homo sapiens, Homo sapiens remain the only human species on the planet, the agricoltural revolution alwais we meet forced migrations! In the human evolution, two major groups of major constraints forced to migrate: internal species conflicts, historically determined conditions. Forced migrations are events causing the injury of the right to move and remain and the denial of freedom to move and migrate, forcing individuals to unwanted behaviors (to leave and most often to escape), both in absolute terms and in relation with a specific time, place, way, pattern. Conflicts are always caused by human behavior. In the environmental conditions always have been created an modified by human behavior, now more, last 100 years these modifications were more faster, as climate change, an anthropogenic and global phenomenon, is demostrating. Calzolaio 12

13 Ecosystems and living species at risk: we are approaching the planet buondaries According to the UN Environment Programme, the Earth is in the midst of a mass extinction of life. Scientists estimate that species of plant, insect, bird and mammal become extinct every 24 hours. This is nearly 1,000 times the "natural" or "background" rate and, say many biologists, is greater than anything the world has experienced since the vanishing of the dinosaurs nearly 65m years...ago. The action taken over the next two decades will determine whether the relatively stable and benign environmental conditions on which human civilization has depended for the past 10,000 years will continue beyond this century. If we fail to use this opportunity, many ecosystems on the planet will move into new, unprecedented state in which the capacity to provide for the needs of present and future generations is highly uncertain. (Secretariat of the Convention on Biological Diversity. Global Biodiversity Outlook 3) Calzolaio 13

14 An epocal schift on migration flows for living species, including humans! It s possible to predict that in the next three decades there will be hundreds of millions of new climate refugees, especially in certain areas, especially towards Europe, especially through the Mediterranean Sea. Ipcc reports show some global climate change impacts, unique, reliable, albeit with different sizes, in different temporal scenarios and with a different degree of geographical vulnerability: sea raising, water shortage, extreme weather events, which all have impacts in the Mediterranean basin recognized as a crucial area of the entire planet (hotspot). The Mediterranean has been, is and will be a huge migration crossroads of the world, with complex effects on ecosystem dynamics, on international social security and politics, on cultural and religious evolutions. Calzolaio 14

15 Those who leave and will leave from North Africa (the five countries with their shoreline on the Mediterranean Sea) in general don't look for the first "asylum", they are not "refugees", mostly they are coming from the countries of Sub-Saharian Africa, fleeing from other armed and climatic upheavals. Yet to get there (in North Africa) those people first had to flee their residence, then travel a lot so dangerous and exploited (even the Sahara, as the Mediterranean is a graveyard of forced migrants). The climate refugees have no responsibility of events caused by the behavior of other communities across the other side of the world ("our" rich world). Here, it should be stated for all a right to stay, not to migrate! Of course adapting it with measures for prevention and resilience, mitigation and reduction, with funds for assistance. And Mediterranean policies - solidarity responsible, tolerant fair - are essential. Calzolaio 15

16 a Michael Nash docufilm (2010) Calzolaio 16

17 I am finisching: we have to discuss about regions, energy, climate, refugees and you ve choiced a very good location for this side event! We are in an old station, SNCF (Société Nationale des Chemins de fer Français), part of the industrial heritage of the nineteenth century. Built in 1926 along the tracks of the Gare du Nord, this building was formerly the MESSAGING CUSTOMS. Now it s a greenery-strewn retail and culinary hub. The garden is installed between the hall and the railway tracks, draws a continuous route: covered garden under the Halle Pajol, open garden to the north. organized into successive strips of vegetable scenes. The architects sought to minimize the environmental footprint of the building, the first solar power station in Paris. Last May «La Chapelle» migrants found shelter in front of the Vaclav Havel library in Pajol street and where evacuated (at the beginning of June). The migrants were transfered by force, in spite of the popular resistance, to the police station of «L'Evangile» street. Many inhabitants of the 18th district of Paris express their indignation and bring food, clothes, blankets, backpacks, matresses, plastic canvas sheets, cardboard boxes, and continue to support and welcome the migrants. Calzolaio 17

18 Inciso in italiano sul dialogo della Natura e di un Islandese (Leopardi, 1824) Natura s speakimg: Immaginavi tu forse che il mondo fosse fatto per causa vostra? Ora sappi che nelle fatture, negli ordini e nelle operazioni mie, trattone pochissime, sempre ebbi ed ho l intenzione a tutt altro, che alla felicità degli uomini o all infelicità. Quando io vi offendo in qualunque modo e con qual si sia mezzo, io non me n avveggo, se non rarissime volte: come, ordinariamente, se io vi diletto o vi benefico, io non lo so; e non ho fatto, come credete voi, quelle tali cose, o non fo quelle tali azioni, per dilettarvi o giovarvi. E finalmente, se anche mi avvenisse di estinguere tutta la vostra specie, io non me ne avvedrei Tu mostri non aver posto mente che la vita di quest universo è perpetuo circuito di produzione e distruzione, collegate ambedue tra se di maniera, che ciascheduna serve continuamente all altra, e alla conservazione del mondo; il quale sempre che cessasse o l una o l altra di loro, verrebbe parimente in dissoluzione. Per tanto risulterebbe in suo danno se fosse lui cosa alcuna libera da patimento. Calzolaio 18

19 Thank you to the European Federation of Agencies and Regions for Energy and Environment, the network of regional and local organisations which implement, co-ordinate and facilitate energy and environment policies to the Fedarene s Board of Administration, the 65 member regions from 18 countries, and to Abruzzo Region to the city of Paris (in this moment of suffering and sorrow) to all the audience, and to everybody that support and improve the resilience of the planet and the acknowledgement of the climate refugees. Calzolaio Master CIRPS ( ) 19

20 Best regards: Calzolaio 20